


The Fewer Men

by MercuryGray



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Aftermath, F/M, Henry V - Freeform, Post-Canon, References to Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 17:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13323141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: Post-canon. A trip to the theatre gives Collins pause to think about something that happened a long time ago.





	The Fewer Men

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr.

T hey left the theatre in a rush, his hand tight around hers, pulling her away from her laughing friends and his, away from the crowd and down a darkened street, she following his lead with a kind of bemused, surprised pleasure, submitting to this sudden fascination with her body with interest of her own.

 

It was not that he wanted sex, perhaps - more that he wanted to wash out the feeling left by the film, the trumpets and drums and talk of chivalry, Olivier in his crown and armor, rallying his troops, the words that rang trite and true all at once, the words that he could not escape all jumbled together in his head with things he'd seen and things he knew.

 

_ O that we now had here _

_ But one ten thousand of those men in England _

_ That do no work to-day! _

 

It was amazing that they'd granted them passes at all, half the flight and a fair number of WAAFs, too, thinking it was better to lose them for a few hours to drink and wild abandon than lose them entirely to overwork and nervous breakdowns. Not enough pilots - not enough men. It was a constant refrain.

 

_ No, my fair cousin: _

_ If we are mark'd to die, we are enow _

_ To do our country loss; and if to live, _

_ The fewer men, the greater share of honour. _

 

Men in pubs would slap his shoulders and buy his pints and call him a hero, but there was nothing heroic in living, in limping back. There were men, good men, out there, stranded and lost, stuck behind barbed wire in prison camps or waiting hopelessly for the SOE to bundle them out of whatever hide-hole they'd managed to crawl into in France. 

 

And better men than those who would not come back at all.

 

_ Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, _

_ But he'll remember with advantages _

_ What feats he did that day: then shall our names. _

_ Familiar in his mouth as household words _

_ Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd. _

 

The Wingco brought around the new recruits, fresh from cadetships, twenty, thirty, thirty-five hours in the crate, giving out names that no one would remember (unless they survived more than two or three weeks, which experience said was unlikely). The new men struggled to make an impression on the old hands, the heroes they had so looked up to in their school days who now treated them like children, piping for grand stories. "Wingco says you flew at the evacuations, Lieutenant Collins," one of them would always say. "That you were shot down and bailed out."  And Collins always turned away in silence, neither confirming or denying, his only thought the same each time:  _ My name's not the one you should remember. I had a friend, his name was Farrier, he was a better man than me. A better pilot, too. I'm not the man to idolize. I'm not your hero. _

 

_ And gentlemen in England now a-bed _

_ Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, _

_ And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks _

_ That fought with us upon - _

 

"Rob!" She pressed herself away from him, against the wall, her lipstick smudged and her curls crushed, breathless and bright-eyed. "What's wrong?"

 

"Can't a man kiss his girl?" he asked, trying to be insolent, insouciant. What did a moldy old speech mean to him?

 

"Not like that," she said, breathing heavy. "You're somewhere else."

 

Yes, somewhere else - drowning, always drowning. A living man who should have been dead, in place of a dead man who should be living. He should have made it, not Collins. He should have been here, in this place, and Collins should have been -

 

"The man behind us was talking about Dunkirk." 

 

_ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,  _

_ and say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.' _

 

Her face fell, and her touch became one of comfort, tightening around his hand. Beneath her jacket and his their hearts were beating wildly, caught up in the moment, two beings breathless with anticipation, one now trying to still herself so she might make sense of the other. "Oh, Rob."

He'd stolen this moment, stolen it from other, better men who deserved better than what they'd gotten, Farrier and all the rest who would never go to a theatre again, never hold a girl and kiss and be so sad that in this moment he was now so happy.  _ We few, we happy few, we band of brothers - For he who sheds his blood today with me - _

 

"I miss him, Vi!" 

 

The words finally slipped out, and the tears too. He was glad she could not see him in the dark, but she would know. She always knew. And in the dark she tightened around him, and kissed him gently back. "I miss him, too."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Laurence Olivier's Henry V was released in November of 1944, a project he was asked to do by the British Government to increase morale in the wake of the Normandy landings. (A very intentional choice, as Henry V also features an expedition into France, bad odds, and several rousing speeches - a line from which is now also permanently embedded in World War Two movie canon as the title of the wildly successful Band of Brothers miniseries.) The production was lavish, even by standards of the time, and uses the visual language of a book of hours, a kind of medieval prayer book, to frame scene changes. It was one of the first Shakespeare adaptations to be commercially successful. If you've never seen it, it's worth a watch.
> 
> Given the timing of the production, I thought it would be interesting to see what at least one character in the movie would make of the message being sent.
> 
> Collins, in my version of the canon, has picked up the name Robert or Robin.
> 
> The speech stuck in Collins' head here is Henry V, Act IV Scene iii, also known as the St. Crispin's Day Speech. You can listen to Olivier do the speech on Youtube, or, for more Dunkirk cast fun, watch Mark Rylance (Mr. Dawson) at the RSC or Kenneth Branagh (Commander Bolton) in his own 1989 movie adaptation. All of them are exceptional, and, surprisingly, all slightly different.


End file.
